A newly released interrogation video shows Robert Pickton and a female friend trying to fool RCMP interrogators by claiming that ‘Willie’ the pig butcher was the prey, not the predator in a bloody 1997 knife fight with a prostitute.

The January 2000 video — shown for the first time Tuesday at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry — suggests RCMP officers may have let Pickton off the hook by allowing his longtime friend Gina Houston to accompany and answer questions for him.

RCMP Constables Ruth Yurkiw and John Cater ask Pickton what happened in his trailer on the night of March 23, 1997, when “you and a prostitute had a big altercation.”

“I mean everything has been dropped . . . the problem is she should’ve been charged,” Pickton says.

“Yeah, she attacked him,” Houston adds. “And when the statement was given they dropped it.”

“It was a terrifying event for me,” Pickton claims, while hugging himself into a corner in a near fetal position at times, and rocking on his chair. His palms appear to be black with dirt, and he is wearing a baseball cap and grungy sweater.

Pickton tells the officers he picked up the woman in Vancouver and promised her $100 for sex — which corroborates with the woman’s version. But that is where the similarity ends.

Pickton says after the victim shot herself up with drugs she went into his kitchen, found a six-inch butcher knife on the table and attacked him.

“Why I had it there, I don’t even know,” Pickton says. “I cook you know, and I do pigs or whatever, and anyways I turned around and (Anderson) sliced a big chunk off my face.”

Pickton runs his fingers across his throat and under both arms to demonstrate where he was slashed, and says she stabbed him through the jaw, knocking out two teeth, and again in the back as he tried to enter his truck to escape.

“I did not take the knife away from her. I aimed it to her, and knifed her twice,” Pickton says. “That’s the one thing I shouldn’t have done.”

“I never want to think of that day again,” he shivers.

Pickton then says he went to the police station to report the incident before driving himself to hospital. He insists he never before brought a prostitute into his trailer and never did again.

Pickton denies to Yurkiw that he offered to pay an associate to bring “Ms. Anderson” from the Downtown Eastside back to the farm so he could finish her off, as an informant had suggested.

“No,” Houston adds.

Yurkiw adds: “um, speaking of that, um, it’s been alleged that you may have had something to do with one or two of those prostitutes. No?”

“No,” Pickton answers.

Pickton says he put handcuffs on Ms. Anderson after she attacked him. He is asked why he keeps handcuffs in his trailer.

“If someone breaks in what do you do?” Houston answers for him. “If you can get ‘em down, you handcuff ‘em.”

The interview was never shown to jurors in Pickton’s trial.

The inquiry has heard Ms. Anderson was handcuffed on one hand, and fought off Pickton. He tricked her by saying she could leave during a break in the fight, then attacked again, she told investigators.

Finally she ran naked to the road and flagged down a car. She came close to death in hospital but was revived. Attempted-murder charges against Pickton were dropped in 1998, reportedly because Ms. Anderson was an unreliable drug addict.

During cross-examination by lawyer Cameron Ward, RCMP’s lead Pickton investigator Cpl. Mike Connor acknowledged that allowing Houston to attend the interrogation and help Picton answer questions was problematic and not “how I would conduct the interview.”

Connor was pulled off the Pickton case in 1999 against his will, but watched the Pickton interview on a TV set from another room in 2000.

After the attack on Ms. Anderson, Pickton was found in the same hospital with the matching handcuff key in his pocket, Ward told Connor Tuesday.

“You had a huge break,” said Ward. “You had a slam-dunk attempted murder.”

Connor agreed. He acknowledged the failure to convict Pickton after the 1997 attack likely allowed dozens more women to die.

Related Posts

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.